A dispatcher with the city's 311 Center was killed as she walked out of a coffee shop Friday afternoon about a block from Chicago police headquarters on the South Side in a shooting that also left the intended target injured, police said.

The shooting happened just before 4 p.m. near a Starbucks at 35th Place and State Street when a gunman opened fire on a man, a documented gang member, who was struck several times, Superintendent Eddie Johnson told reporters at the scene of the shooting.

The shooting happened across the street from the headquarters parking lot and across the street from the edge of the Illinois Institute of Technology campus.

Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune

Chicago police at the scene of a fatal shooting in the 3500 block on South State Street on May 20, 2016.

Chicago police at the scene of a fatal shooting in the 3500 block on South State Street on May 20, 2016.

(Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

Yvonne Nelson was a dispatcher with the city's 311 Center, according to the Office of Emergency Management and Communications. She had just completed her 14th year.

The 49-year-old woman was an innocent victim who was walking out of the coffee shop when she was shot in the chest, police said. Nelson of the 4900 block of South Vincennes Avenue was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

The man, who is a documented gang member and in his 20s, was shot several times and seriously wounded, according to police. He was walking out of a PNC Bank branch when he was shot.

"This incident right here highlights what I've been saying for the past month and a half about how brazen these violent offenders are," Johnson said.

Johnson took no questions saying that the crime scene remains active and the search for the offender ongoing.

"I'm just so overwhelmed ... I'm just sick," said Mary Nelson, Yvonne Nelson's stepmother who received word of the woman's shooting Friday afternoon along with Yvonne's father.

After her husband left, a supervisor from the 311 center called the home with words of condolence. But Nelson hadn't yet received word of her stepdaughter's death and then she checked TV news reports to get the information. Mayor Rahm Emanuel also called the family.

She saw TV reports from the scene, "and I was hoping and praying this wasn't what they were talking about," she said.

Mary Nelson was awaiting word from the rest of Nelson's family.

"She was a beautiful person, hardworking, loving, kind. She was a great sister, a great aunt," Nelson said.

Nelson had three sisters and a brother, but had no children.

Nelson was "a dedicated and hardworking employee," said Melissa Stratton, spokeswoman for the Office of Emergency Management and Communications in a statement Friday evening.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with her family, friends and colleagues during this difficult time. She will be deeply missed by her fellow staff at 311," according to the statement.

Pastor John Hannah of the New Life Covenant Church said he prayed with the Nelson's family on Friday night, adding they were trying to cope with her sudden death. Nelson was a member of his large South Side congregation.

"The family is devastated. There in total shock," Hannah said at a morning prayer vigil along a 2-mile stretch of East 79th Street where hundreds of residents in red prayed along the major South Side thoroughfare for an end of the violence,

Hannah added reflected on the senselessness of the crime, noting that "she got caught in crossfire just because she wanted a cup of coffee."

The shooting happened as Chicago police brass, including Johnson, were concluding a news conference at police headquarters to tout the arrests of dozens of gang members in a police sweep.

In other shootings in the city since Friday morning, three men were killed and at least 11 other people have been wounded, authorities said.